Photo Friday: How I Edit

Next to, “What kind of camera do you use,” the second-most common question I get is about editing: Do you use Photoshop? Do you edit your photos? How much do you edit your photos? What do you do?

No. Yes. As little as possible. I’ll show you.

And I’ll warn you right now – you might be underwhelmed.

I use Lightroom and absolutely love it. It has everything I need, from excellent cataloging and organization to an entire spectrum of editing. I can also shoot tethered directly from Lightroom but that’s a story for another day.

Now this isn’t the tool that you’d use to stick Simon Baker’s face on your ex-boyfriend’s body… but that’s not a problem I have so I can’t really make any recommendations if that’s a feature you need

While I do love Lightroom, I do not love editing photos. I spend as little time as possible, we’re talking seconds in post-processing. A minute, 90 seconds tops. The tweaks I make are only to make minor corrections and give the photo a little punch, not drastically alter it or fix major fouls. It hasn’t always been like that, but now, if I can’t give a photo that little extra oomph in seconds, I try to identify what’s wrong, fix it, and reshoot. And I try to save myself some frustration – I review the photos before eating the subject

These are my post-processing Greatest Hits:Temperature/White Balance – most of my photos come out a little on the cool side for my taste (white balance is measured with a temperature scale in Lightroom) so I almost always increase the temp for a warmer feel. I want my whites white, not blue-ish. What I do to the temperature is directly related to the time of day I shoot. Mid-day shots get little to no tweaking while early morning shots usually have to be warmed more. And late afternoon shots may even have to be cooled a bit.
*Exposure – Getting the exposure right on the camera is my goal but I usually find that I’m a little underexposed when I view the pictures in Lightroom.
*Blacks – I always increase the blacks. Few photos don’t benefit from the depth, definition, and richness that increasing the blacks gives.
*Contrast – Bumping up the contrast increases the difference between the darkest darks and lightest lights, it breathes life into flat photos and makes them pop.
*Lights – I increase the fill light just a bit to brighten the photo. Brighten is the wrong word. But it’s the one I’m going with.Crop – I am completely incapable of holding my camera level so I have to straighten just about every photo. After I export the edited photo, I switch over to the 1:1/square crop and export a square photo for the “pretty food sites.” This lets me control the composition of the crop rather than using a site’s default square crop.

The areas marked with * are part of a custom preset I created in Lightroom. I call it “The Usual.” I realized that I was always applying the same edits to every photo so I used those settings to create a preset. With one click of the button, my usual edits are applied at once. Mucho time saved. It’s like my very own homebrew Instagram filter. Only not nearly as artsy.

The photo of the pear was a little flat, a little dull, and a little cool straight off the camera. 15 seconds is the difference between Before and After.

The photo of the figs, you can see I overexposed it a little bit on the camera. The amount of light flooding into the studio was… what’s a word for “incredibly magnificent x 1000?” It’s rarely a problem I struggle with at home – and I know you know what I’m talking about I applied The Usual and then had to decrease the exposure a bit and increased the blacks a little more than normal. Otherwise, it’s so bright that the warmth and detail are lost. The difference between Before and After here was probably closer to 45-60 seconds.

I tried Lightroom forever ago and didn’t like how it moved all my photos around – but it looks like I need to give it a try. I’m using Elements right now and while I love the ease, sometimes I wish it had just a bit more, ya know? Gotta talk my husband into buying LR now! 😉

Blair got me Lightroom with his student id, I love it, and it has really helped me with my photos. I like you can’t get a level shot, your tips are extremely helpful since I am still a novice at it. Thank you!

This is great! I always love food photography posts but they often don’t touch on editing, which is crucial. It’s one of those things that seems overwhelming at first but you just need to get the hang of it. I’ve been waiting to invest in Lightroom or Photoshop, but it sounds like a worthwhile purchase. I’ve been using a free program called Photoscape that I like a lot, but it doesn’t have quite the same level of control. Your photos are gorgeous!

I have Photoshop (my husband bought it for himself, digital media degree), but I’ve been considering Lightroom for the extras like photo organization. I was worried about the functionality compared to Photoshop, but this looks like just what I need.

I love Lightroom, it’s the best investment I have made, beside my DSLR.

I like to process them a bit, like you do. My problem is that when I upload the pictures in Flick it does not look exactly like in Lightroom. Did you experience this problem and if so what do you suggest I do?

Helene – I don’t see any real difference between Lightroom version and the uploaded Flickr photo. I wonder if it could be something in your export settings? These are mine: Export to JPG; Quality 99, Color Space sRGB, No limit on file size, I do not resize to fit (I use Flickr’s default sizing off my original), Resolution = 600px. I previously used “sharpen for screen, standard amount” but when I reinstalled Lightroom a couple of months ago, this option was unchecked and I only realized it now. I rechecked it.

Such a helpful post, Shawnda! I started shooting RAW and using Lightroom a few months ago, after using Photoshop Elements for a long while. Lightroom is so much better in my opinion! And, now that I have these tips from you, I think I’ll enjoy using it even more. Thank you!!

I’m curious if you’re a Mac or PC? 😉 I’m a Mac and have to first upload my photos into iPhoto then export/import into Lightroom. Haven’t looked into if I can shoot tethered or not…

I have heard a lot about Lightroom, but I have never used it. I have Photoshop Elements and I barely use it either. I need to do more editing, but I hate it SO much! I would rather always have the perfect shot out of the can, but after reading your posts and seeing your perfectly great “before” shots and the amazing “after” shots, I know I need to work on it more. With Lightroom, do you always work with RAW photos? I normally shoot HQ JPG, but I can shoot RAW. Thanks!!